CYCLING & WALKING: National Stats

A useful new government backed report has been published looking at the numbers of people regularly cycling and walking and the change in numbers since the period 2013/14.

The basic stats are interesting in themselves:

Walking: The proportion of people walking at least once a month in England has remained at 86% for the past three years. However the proportion of people walking at least once a week, 3 times a week and 5 times a week have all experienced statistically significant increases for 2 consecutive years. This suggests that there is no change in the percentage of people that walk, but that people are walking more frequently.

Cycling: In England the proportion of the population who cycled at least once per month has remained at around 15%. Cycling rates at higher frequency levels have also had no significant change. However, cycling rates (at least once a month) vary greatly between authorities, ranging from 5% in Burnley to 43% in Oxford and 58% in Cambridge. Cambridge and Oxford have high student populations and students cycle more frequently than other groups. This may partly explain why these local authorities have higher cycling rates.